After years of declining numbers, undergraduate enrollment at U.S. higher education institutions is finally seeing growth again, according to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC).
Dr. Jeremy Cohen
According to the NSC’s Current Term Enrollment Estimates Fall 2023 report – released Tuesday – overall fall undergraduate enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities rose by 1.2%, a minor change where the number of enrollees went from 15,072,249 to 15,248,077.
This 175,828-enrollee increase marks the first rise for overall fall undergrad enrollment in a number of years. Among the years captured in the report, 2019 to 2022 all faced varying rates of decline, with Fall 2021 being the worst (-3.4%).
"We continue to see almost all of the growth [for undergrads] coming not from new freshmen, but rather from larger numbers of students who are continuing from last year and also returning from stop-outs,” said Dr. Doug Shapiro, director of the NSC research enter. “The number of new freshmen this year is up just by only 18,000 compared to last year. [Around] 10% of the total increase in undergrads is accounted for by increases in the number of freshmen."
Fall 2023 saw enrolment growth at public two-year schools and community colleges rose significantly (2.6%) while public and private nonprofit four-year schools saw increases to a lesser degree (0.6% for both.)
Shapiro attributed this key showing from community colleges primarily to “older students, vocational students, and dual-enrolled students.”
The report also indicated that overall graduate school enrollment over the past five years has generally shown small amounts of improvement. With Fall 2023 came a 0.6% increase, following a 0.9% decrease in 2022 and positive growth for the years before. And compared to even pre-pandemic numbers, grad enrollment is doing better, Shapiro said.
